My Purpose
by The Nevermore Raven
Summary: I have constantly wondered about purpose and how much I wish I could have one. Watching the emotions within a fox's blue eyes caused me to have a new set of thoughts. Does he care for me? I care for him, but why am I afraid of his friendship?


**My Purpose**

_Nevermore Raven_

_A.N. I put a lot of effort into working this one out and describing Shadow's inner conflict. Please send me a review!_

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Purpose. Everything I know of has purpose. This world is filled with more purposes than one can possibly imagine. The sun warms the Earth. The Earth is home to life. Life thrives, reproduces, dies, and adapts. The people around me have purpose. The plants and animals around me have purpose, as well as anything else that crosses my mind, even if I can't find the purpose itself.

Here in the bleak weather I waited as clouds roll and tumbled through themselves high above and dropped cool rain upon this city. I am completely lost. My confusion is not of regard to location; that is no problem for me. I am used to my so called home. I know the general areas of landmarks and places. I know where certain people live, where they can go home and rest.

The people I mention are the only individuals that I know. I do not even know them at all. I have met them, heard of them, briefly when a time ago I had a purpose, a destiny. I had a goal and an objective, something that I could work on every day as I still lived and acted in response to whatever conditions I was subjected to.

I wanted to destroy the world, to finish off humanity in all of its insolent pride and glory once and for all. I was at my rope's end; I could not bear the pain I have endured for all of my life any longer. And then this happened. Right as I was about to fulfill my purpose, life decided to throw a wrench into my plans and ruin everything? Why? I was shocked by the new revelation for I did not have the slightest clue about what it held in store. Not that anyone else cares about that.

Reader, this is why I mention purpose. You see, everything has a purpose. Sometimes the purpose is not always obeyed, yet the purpose is still there. I do not have a purpose. The more days go by and time continues her march forward, the more I feel that I am completely useless.

Rain tapped incessantly upon my head as I allowed a lonely sigh out of my throat. The rain had started a minute ago, and my fur is getting colder by the minute. A large drop of rain plopped against my nose, causing me to experience a tickling discomfort as I resisted the urge to sneeze.

"Atchoo!" My efforts to avoid the reaction failed as my head jerked forward and raindrops were thrown off my face. My body became colder in the rain, and a following gust of wind failed to provide warmth. My skin stung with the chill, and I decided to endure the discomfort. Why comfort myself? I have no purpose.

I took a step forward and narrowed my angry eyes as I looked around at the cement of the sidewalk, the tarmac of the road, and the glass of a nearby building. In the gloom of the rain, the building of glass appeared to be a dark blue shape that jutted into the sky. Behind me stood a parking deck, an arrangement of concrete pillars and grey floors stacked on top of each other. A red sedan rushed by on the road, sending spray into the air. I closed my eyes as the amount of water falling upon me doubled with the spray landing upon my back, thoroughly soaking my ebony fur.

A discontented growl escaped my lips as drops dripped off my ears, nose, and quills. Rain. Everyone else is in coats, in their buildings, under the shelter of umbrellas. They do not like rain. It is too cold, to grey, to wet and dreary. Rain does not bother me, for I feel the same way within my heart. Cold. Dim. Dreary. Attempting to make the lagging time speed up, I continued walking forward in the rain.

* * * * * * *

I believe I will get out of this rain, if only for a moment. I passed several more city blocks and started a sprint, flying forward as rain pelted against my body. Within moments I stopped in front of a pleasant looking house within a residential area. This area was more inviting than the downtown buildings, but it still held the look of bleakness weighing the scene down. I know who lives in this house I am watching, studying, and waiting near. He is one of the several individuals that I know.

With a sigh, I raced forth and hid in the back of the house, concealing myself in the back yard amongst the maple trees and juniper bushes. The leafed shelter provided me some comfort, and I sat down behind a shrub and against the trunk of a maple to once again muse to myself. I closed my eyes and listened to rain plop against the earth at my feet and softly tap the leaves that crowned the tree above. I rubbed my hand thoughtfully along the grooves of the tree trunk, fingering the jagged ridges of grey bark that had patches of light green and hairy lichen.

I am here because when I am near the others I am familiar with, I feel less oppressed. My mood lifts slightly, and my worries are diminished by the familiarity and comfort that the others seem to radiate. I am quiet and I am angry, but I realize that a soft spot is thawing in my frozen heart. I will not deny the fact that my heart is transforming, but I am reluctant to support it. Why should I love again? Every time that I have loved, I have ultimately received brutal loneliness, grief, and despair. Why should I love again, only to be hurt again, to expose myself to the pain that has crushed me in the past?

In order to love, I must be emotional, and in order to be emotional, I must be vulnerable to negative emotions as well as positive ones. That fact in itself would be balancing itself, but that fact does not consider the grief, the despair, the shame that I have experienced. My heart has been broken many times and on many occasions, and the shattering of my heart is to a far greater degree than one would expect...

I glanced up at the leaves above me. The maple leaves were a pale and gentle tint of silver from below, and they managed to calm me as I waited. My intended brief glance became a prolonged study. A burst of wind gusted through the leaves of silver, causing them to bend and softly rattle as the crown of the trees became a natural orchestra. I closed my eyes in my silence and waited on the trunk of the maple. The wind and the rain are so soothing, so gentle and calm.

Even the trees have purposes and many purposes in fact. They grow, they wait, they bask in sunlight, and they draw water from the earth. They provide natural beauty, they produce shade. A bird softly chirped and my heart felt at peace. The sound of a door closing caused me to twist my ears in order to focus on the source. One crimson eye opened partway, looking toward the house from the corner of my vision around the trunk that was now a part of my sanctuary.

At the back of the house, a golden yellow form moved closer to the trees, walking over the lush grass as I waited silently. I could see large, deep blue eyes glance about the small patch of forest in an intensive, thoughtful manner. My mind filled with fear. I am fond of the fox boy. Tails. I have the urge to bond with someone else, and yet I have this fear that weighs me down. What if he leaves me? What if he dies? What if I am a danger to him?

My fear continued to fester when I heard the subject of my thoughts speak reluctantly. "Shadow?" I opened my eyes and watched his deep blue ones; the shade of his deep blue eyes complemented the carmine color of my own. The young pup slowly, hesitantly approached me, stepping around the evergreen shrub to watch me more clearly. I remained silent as he asked his second inquiry.

"Shadow, what are you doing back here? Are you lost?" I replied in my emotionless voice. "I am not lost. I can take care of myself." The blue eyes of the child seemed, for a split moment, to be pained and they recovered their composure quickly. The brief reaction planted a thought in my mind. Does he care about me?

"Sorry, I did not mean to make you angry," the boy apologized. He looked to the ground before focusing on me again. "Why are you here? Of all the places around, I did not expect you to be at my home." I closed my eyes.

"Hmph. Why does it matter?" Tails' eyes flashed something else for a moment and he remained silent. With a shrug I sighed and admitted, "I do not know what I am doing here, boy. I guess I felt like being here."

"Oh, I see." Tails flicked his ear after a drop of water plopped onto it, flinging the drop off his head and onto the ground of soaked leaves. "Why are you so sad, Shadow?" His question caught me off guard.

I had to register his sentence before answering defensively, "I am fine. Leave me alone, kid, or I will leave myself." The pup had a thought flash through his blue eyes.

"I worry about you, Shadow. You always seem so depressed and alone," Tails stated as his eyes studied my own. With that comment, my mind snapped.

"I do not need your petty kindness, boy. I am fine."

"That does not worry me." Tails stopped himself in his sentence, realizing what it seemed to be. "Sorry! That is not what I meant. I am trying to say that does not worry me right now. What worries me is that although you say you are fine, I can tell you are not." I growled and clenched my fist.

"Leave me alone, boy," I said as I stood up and started to walk away. The kid had a glimmer of determination in his blue eyes. With that said, I quickly sprinted away and into the forest.

* * * * * * *

The surroundings of greenery and the tapping of rain on leaves surrounded me, filling my mind with peace. I leaned against a large, moss covered rock and closed my eyes as I lay on its soft carpet of green. Why does that fox even bother with me? He does not know what I have been through. He may know about it, but he will never know what it really feels like. I sighed quietly and raised my hand to rub my head, for the thoughts were starting to cause faint throbs of discomfort to pulse within my skull.

Emotions! Why are they so damn confusing? I do not want to bond with someone again. It hurts too much. I would need to fight my way though all of my fears and pain to love someone again, to have a friend. And... What if I lose my friends just like I have before? The very worst thing I could possibly experience would be to lose everything that mattered to me again like I did on the wretched colony that floats in the vast loneliness of space.

If such an event were to happen, I would drop every last ounce of my will to live on and continue suffering. I would go deeper into the ground than I am now. Now my heart is frozen in permafrost, sealed off to avoid pain, and yet it still hurts. I sighed again. If that happened again, I would send myself two meters below the ground in my self-induced grave...

Yes, reader. I am referring to killing myself. If you want to be completely ignorant and foolish, call me "Emo." It bothers me to no end when people call me that and mock me for it. When I think of "Emo," I think of some poor soul that is so unstable that the slightest inconvenience will cause him or her to burst into tears and have a bout of wrist cutting or suicidal thoughts.

I am a world apart from "Emo." Next time you call someone "Emo" consider what they have suffered through. If they have not suffered greatly, then I guess they are absolutely "Emo." If they have suffered extensively, than almost no one even partly understands where they stand in life.

I do not cry over small inconveniences and the occasional insult. I have experienced the death of my family and torture. I have been abused by the government and sick individuals on a multitude of ways. Emotionally, physically, psychologically, sexually, I have been delivered the entire package of ultimate shame, and I hate it.

I looked down at the ground. At my feet a large, silvery grey puddle was laying perfectly still on the ground. It was beautiful in its own right, a pool of molten silver, a delicate mirror formed by nature. My fears returned to me and a shudder ripped through my chest as my heart ached.

This puddle is a mirror, a reflection. I look into the puddle, and it shows me what I am. Before me I can see, lifeless, empty crimson eyes. My sister once told me that I have beautiful eyes. She loved rubies because they would remind her of my eyes. Purest crimson. Like rubies. The color of blood. Blood is the vital fluid within my heart that carries life. I loved Maria. She was the best sister I could have ever had.

I have spent my time in the darkness. Darkness. Night. The Moon. Death. Pain. Fear. Hate. Each of these has an opposite, a concept that perfectly balances the negative out with positive. For darkness, there is light. For night, there is day. The Moon has the Sun. Death has life. Pain has joy. Fear has hope. And Hate has... Love.

Love... A single ring of ripples silently spread across the silvery surface from just below my face as I stared at the water. I closed my eyes as a second tear fell onto the mirror of water. Love... I want to be loved. I want to bask in the sunshine and be loved. I have found out that if I love, I will hurt... but... if I do not love I will hurt far, far worse. A third tear fell onto the puddle, adding moisture straight from my aching heart to its reservoir of water.

I opened my eyes again. Deep within my ruby eyes, I could see a soft, pleasant glow of emotion. I sighed again in relief. A great weight upon my heart was at once lifted and forgotten, so completely it was almost magic. My heart hurt greatly, but I realized something as several more tears left my eyes. Love. My purpose is to... love...

_The End_


End file.
